


Take Her to the Moon

by Ceinos



Category: Inside Out (2015)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 13:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4667444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceinos/pseuds/Ceinos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Very short fic I wrote because I both a) really liked the idea of Riley growing up to become an astronaut and b) Inside Out is an excellent metaphor for depression, and I wanted to elaborate on that some, because depression isn't just something that goes away</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Her to the Moon

Riley lives with depression most of her life. Most days it’s a whisper barely thin enough to spread over toast, but sometimes it sits heavy in every spoonful of her breakfast cereal, each repeated motion slower than the last. 

When Riley is in high school, her parents start arguing. Angry words filter through the floor of her bedroom, and she draws patterns on her skin in blood. She doesn’t make it to hockey tryouts that year. She never tries to run away again, but some nights she sneaks down to the deserted rink, skating slow circles on the empty ice.  
Her parents find her one night, sneaking back into the house. When she shows them the half-healed scars, tell them how their anger has hurt her, they hug her, promise it will be okay, empty words that do little to fill the void. But that weekend, they all go to a therapist; Riley by herself and then the whole family. And it helps.

In college, Riley starts taking physics and astronomy courses, mostly out of curiosity. They’re hard and sometimes stressful, but she enjoys them. When the work keeps her from getting on the varsity hockey team, she looks at the old, pale scars and thinks about adding more. Instead, she asks a friend for help, and they walk with her to the college therapist’s office. She’s prescribed antidepressants. And it helps. 

When she’s twenty-seven, Riley gets her first job at NASA. She’s still on antidepressants, and as she starts training to be an astronaut, she’s never felt more like herself. When she’s thirty-four, she’s selected to take part in a manned mission to the moon, and she remembers what she fought to get here. And sometimes her spoon is still heavy with the feeling that nothing will make it better, but she looks forwards, and it helps.


End file.
